


Catharsis

by the-reylo-void (Anysia)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Complicated enemies, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo: Lonely Together Since 2015, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 10:07:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14932209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anysia/pseuds/the-reylo-void
Summary: It’s difficult carrying a legacy of hope on your shoulders when of the only two people who might have understood you, one is dead and the other might as well be.





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> Another prompt fill for my friend's fundraiser — this is for takekurabehime, who asked for a tough-on-the-outside, fragile-on-the-inside Rey getting some kind words from Kylo. I related pretty deeply to this one so it’s kind of on the raw side, but hopefully it's an enjoyable little slice just the same. :)
> 
> Please enjoy, and if you'd like to help, you can donate to the fundraiser at <https://www.gofundme.com/a-new-chair-for-interstellaireylo> ♥

It’s difficult carrying a legacy of hope on your shoulders when of the only two people who might have understood you, one is dead and the other might as well be.

And the third… Rey’s stomach churns in guilt as the thought crosses her mind, fleeting yet so selfish, so inappropriate as she bows her head at the General’s funeral.

She’d had the Force, and she’d loved and lost.

She might have understood better than anyone.

Poe is on the makeshift dais, speaking to the assembled Resistance fighters (few, so few, even after months of rebuilding). His voice is steady and assured, but his eyes are red, and he doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he’d been weeping. “General Organa would have told us to save our sorrows for another day,” he says. “What matters is that the fight continues. The General created the Resistance. Her brother, Luke Skywalker, in his heroic actions on Crait, allowed us to continue our mission to defeat the First Order. And now…”

Poe’s eyes find Rey’s in the crowd, and she shifts uncomfortably under his scrutiny.

“…we have the last Jedi, the last bit of light in the galaxy, to help us turn the tide of the war. Our secret weapon: Rey of Jakku.”

She manages a weak smile as Poe extols her virtues, her strength, her status as the bastion of light and everything good that would cement the Resistance’s victory.

Rey manages to slip out of the room just as she hears Poe ask her to say a few words, hears a lengthy, awkward pause, hears his voice brighten and say that she must have important work to do, carrying the legend of Luke Skywalker on her shoulders as she does.

A legend. Luke’s weary words echo back to her, and Rey makes her way to the hangar bay, sits underneath the Falcon and wraps her arms around her knees.

She’s a symbol. A beacon.

Not a person.

Something to revere and idolize, not connect to.

It’s been over a week, and no one has even bothered to check her flight records.

No one has asked why she went back to Jakku.

No one has asked why she was crying when she returned to the base.

Or about how she’d found two unmarked graves that hummed faintly in the Force, calling to her deep in the Sinking Fields.

* * *

 

On and on it goes. Expectations. Demands. Questions.

“Rey, we need you to sit with us for just a few to record those new propaganda holos for distribution, okay?”

Rey lets Connix paint dark lines around her eyes and curl her hair, and she doesn’t recognize the Rey that stares back at her on the video feed.

“What was Luke Skywalker really like, Rey? You’re so lucky you got to train with him!”

They’re like children, bright-eyed and hopeful, and she doesn’t know how to tell them that Luke was neither master nor friend.

“This is Rey — be nice to her, new recruit, she’s going to save all of us by the time all’s said and done.”

She isn’t even sure how to save herself.

“Rey.”

She can’t be the last Jedi.

“Rey!”

She can’t carry everyone’s hopes when so many of her own have died.

“Rey.”

She’s curled up under one of the Falcon’s bulkheads again, crying quietly, head rested against her knees, when she hears her name echo across the stars, softer than most.  

She feels rather than sees the man sitting beside her, and his grief is as palpable as her own.

He must have heard, then.

“Was it peaceful?” Kylo asks. His voice is deep and gravelly with choked-back tears.

“…as much as it could be,” Rey answers after a moment.

She lifts her tear-streaked face, stares into his reddened eyes. “She asked for you. Before.”

Kylo swallows hard and nods. “I know. I felt it.”

They reach for each other before Rey even realizes it, Kylo’s arm tight around her shoulders, her own wrapped around his waist, his head heavy against hers. “And you. What did you think you would find on Jakku?” he murmurs, lips just ghosting across her temple with his words.

She wants to tell him that he’s the first once to notice she’d gone.

Somehow, she knows that he knows already.

Rey closes her eyes. “I wanted you to be wrong. I wanted to be wrong.”

“You didn’t want to be an orphan.” Kylo laughs, short and bitter. “I know the feeling.”

She has her own bitterness to nurse, and pulls away from Kylo’s arms. “At least you were loved.” There’s a bite to it, something acid-tinged and thick with old hurt. “At least you… had someone who loved you for…”

For you. It’s a lie, and Rey knows it even as Kylo looks at her with something sad and resigned in his eyes.

“Why were you crying?” Kylo asks, and she can’t even fault him for the change in subject. It’s that gentle, questioning voice, the one that seems to goad and coax above a core of razor-sharp intent.

“Why were you?” Rey fires back, but it’s a weak parry. Kylo doesn’t even deign to acknowledge it, merely stares at her with those dark eyes.

He does not push against her mind with the Force. He has no need to; there’s an unspoken pact between them to be honest in all things, even when painful.

Rey sighs and rests her head back against Kylo’s shoulder, rests her hand beside his. “I’m tired,” she whispers. “They want… some kind of mythic god-child, the savior of the galaxy, the Jedi hero that everyone thought Luke was.”

“Mm.” Kylo lightly entwines his fingers with hers, and she lets him. “I’ve seen your holos. You always look so afraid. I worry for you.”

_Then end this war and let us both go free._ She can’t bring herself to say it out loud, but she knows Kylo hears it regardless, feels his resigned sigh and the way he holds her hand a little tighter.

“I don’t know if I can be strong for them,” Rey says suddenly, and it’s as if a dam has broken, the words flooding her mouth before she can stop them. “They dress me up like a painted doll carrying a lightsaber, as if I need to be… everything to be of use to them. Beautiful and strong and powerful and emotionless all at once. Good, never tempted, never given to weakness or allowed to feel anything…”

Kylo shifts her closer, uses his free arm to pull her into a loose hug. “My whole life, I felt the darkness,” he murmurs. “The pull of it. The voice I didn’t know was Snoke’s.” She can feel him stiffen at the name of his old master. “And every time I tried to push it aside. Be the heir to the Skywalker lineage I was supposed to be. Heed the call to the light.”

“Yes, how’d that work out for you?” It sounds more bitter than she intended it to, but she can feel Kylo’s lips quirk into a faint hint of a smile that makes her heart ache.

“Don’t be strong for them, Rey. For anyone but yourself.” The words rumble through his chest, and she hates how much she wants to curl up closer to him. “They don’t deserve it. You’re not Rey to them, just an object to be consumed, a mystery to be taken apart, a mythical creature to stare and gawk at.”

“…not all of them.”

“Enough of them. Too many.” He’s quiet for a moment. “The Force gives and takes. You have to learn to bend with it. For yourself. Not for them.”

It’s a still-strange gentleness from this man who should be her enemy, and Rey can’t help it, the way her shoulders begin to shake from unshed tears, the warmth and relief she feels as he awkwardly squeezes her hand. “You don’t have to be strong,” he says quietly. “Not now. Not for anyone else.”

“I don’t know how to move from being no one to being the galaxy’s last hope,” Rey manages, and she hates how weak her voice sounds even to her own ears.

There’s a faint brush of lips against her forehead, a hint of a smile. “There’s the mistake you keep making,” Kylo says. “You were never ‘no one’.”

The bond is fading, and Rey closes her eyes, wills it to stay. “Not to you, I remember.”

“No, Rey. Not to anyone.”

The air shifts, the Force hums, and he’s gone.

Rey turns her hand over, feels the phantom imprint of his fingers twined with hers.

She thinks of Jakku, of Resistance meeting rooms, of burning throne rooms whose secrets still lay undiscovered, of dark eyes and a gentle voice, of words and screams that seem to choke her more and more every day.

Rey wraps her arms around her knees, rests her forehead against them, and cries until she aches.

It feels freeing, somehow.


End file.
